2 We worship you, God of our fathers and mothers;
through life's storm and tempest our guide you have been.
When perils o'ertake us, you never forsake us.
And with your help, O Lord, our battles we win.

3 With voices united our praises we offer;
our songs of thanksgiving to you we now raise.
Your strong arm will guide us, our God is beside us.
To you, our great Redeemer, fore'er be praise!

This hymn of praise combines present and past to give hope for the future: we humbly and thankfully sing God's praise (st. 1), we praise God for his protection throughout our lives (st. 2), and we go forward under God's guiding hand (st. 3). The text was written at the request of J. Archer Gibson, organist at Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City. Gibson asked Julia Buckley Cady Cory (b. New York, NY, 1882; d. Englewood, NJ, 1963) to write a text to the tune KREMSER to replace the older text associated with that tune, "We Gather Together." The new hymn was first sung at Thanksgiving Day services in 1902 at the Brick Presbyterian Church and Church of the Covenant, both in New York City.

It was first published in Hymns of the Living Church (1910) and has been the first hymn in every edition of the Psalter Hymnal.

Cory was the daughter of a prominent New York architect, J. Cleveland Cady. Her father was also a Sunday school superintendent and amateur hymnologist. Partly because of his influence Julia began to write hymns at an early age. She was a member of the Brick Presbyterian Church; after moving to Englewood, New Jersey, she joined the First Presbyterian Church. She married Robert Haskell Cory in 1911.

Liturgical Use:
Heritage festivals and harvest thanksgiving; beginning of worship; doxology during the offering of gifts.

--Psalter Hymnal Handbook

Tune Information:

The tune KREMSER owes its origin to a sixteenth-century Dutch folk song "Ey, wilder den wilt." Later the tune was combined with the Dutch patriotic hymn 'Wilt heden nu treden" in Adrianus Valerius's Nederlandtsch Gedenckclanck published posthumously in 1626. 'Wilt heden nu treden," which celebrated Dutch freedom from Spanish rule, was always popular in the Netherlands, but gained international popularity through an arrangement by Eduard Kremser in his Sechs Altniederlandische Volkslieder (1877) for men's voices. This collection of six songs in German translation from Valerius's anthology was the source of the older English text, 'We Gather Together." Keep a firm but stately tempo with strong, solid organ registration.